Mary Portas goes shopping

I have just read Mary Portas' report on high streets. It's truly a lightweight document. It's especially patchy on what it is Portas thinks we want high streets for. Reading it as a transport campaigner, I was shocked by her repeated assertion that one way forward is to have cheaper car parking - ie compete with edge / out of town shopping centres to attract car borne shoppers. Portas brushes aside environmental concerns about increased car use. OK this report is not a transport report, but if Portas thinks that the great car economy will come and save us she is way behind the curve. She should Google peak oil and learn how oil production is falling year on year, as are discoveries.

The report is light on sources, and it would also appear that Portas has not considered the work of Sustrans showing that non car-borne shoppers represent a greater proportion of spend than most people think.

But for an RBE blog I need to dig deeper, and ask what human need do high streets uniquely address. Portas rightly says they should be social spaces, but constantly seems to have one eye on the perceived need for more shopping to be done, both overall and in high streets. The real main message of the report seems to be that if people don't go shopping retail will decline and then people won't be able to go shopping so much. A circular argument.

In the days when people had to go shopping, probably daily, in their local shops, the social function was a corollary. Now it has to be the high street's main offering. The constant references to having a cup of coffee in the discussion of local economies is because we usually link socialising with eating/drinking. People are doing an  increasing proportion of their socialising in cyberspace, where it can readily be blended with entertainment.

Portas doesn't really get at why we would want to save high streets, because she doesn't examine what human need would not be fulfilled if we didn't have them. Where we need to start when examining how we organise society is with how to sustainably meet human need. That is how an RBE approaches societal change and development.